The poisoning of the Rhine (1987)

From the February 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the 9th of November 1986 a fire at the enormous Sandoz chemicals factory in Basle led to 30 tons of poisonous chemicals, including about 200 kilogrammes of mercury, being washed into the river Rhine as firemen fought to bring the blaze under control. The 40-mile-long wave of poison caused by the incident flowed along the Rhine from Germany into the Netherlands affecting the drinking water of 20 million people. In the upper reaches of the Rhine most plant life, thousands offish, water birds and a quarter of a million eels are estimated to have died and although most of the fish seem to have survived in the lower Rhine they face death from starvation because many insects and crayfish upon which they feed have perished. Such is the severity of the pollution that it could take up to twenty years before the ecological balance of the river is fully restored.

Pollution of the air, soil, rivers and oceans is not a new problem: the smoke-blackened older public buildings in most of Britain's major towns and cities (where restoration has not been carried out); the descriptions of polluted cities and rivers by writers such as Blake, Engels, Kingsley, Dickens, Carpenter, Gissing and Orwell; the terrible death tolls of the early 1950s caused by smog all bear testimony to the way in which industrialisation has ruined the environment and damaged workers' health.

There always have been, and always will be, incidents leading to results that are not foreseen or intended. These accidents may be caused by human error, circumstances beyond human control (such as earthquakes) or lack of knowledge to anticipate all the consequences of an action.

But many of the incidents which occur under capitalism are not, strictly speaking, accidents. The drive to produce profits leads to methods of production designed to ensure that the maximum amount of surplus value is derived from workers' labour power. Human error is much more likely to be increased where work is repetitive, boring and alienating or where the hours of work are long and exhausting. Often workers are kept in ignorance of potentially dangerous substances that they are working with and are consequently unable to take adequate safety precautions. In some instances safety equipment may not be supplied, or removed to increase productivity. Substances are used in agriculture, the drug and chemical industries often with little knowledge of their effects on the environment, the workers using them or. in the case of medicines, the patients consuming them.

But even when hazards are well known and documented the requirement of profitability overrides human needs and dangerous substances continue to be used. There are, for example, about 2000 asbestos-induced deaths a year in Britain although the dangers of using asbestos were pointed out in a Home Office report in 1906. Thalidomide and "Opren" continued to be used after it was known that they had caused deaths and deformities.

It is not unusual for safety standards to be inadequate or ignored altogether to cut production costs. In 1976 workers at the Life Science Products factory in Hopewell. Virginia were found to be working in an environment that was laden with dust from the insecticide "Kepone". The nearby James river also had to be closed because of the severity of the contamination. The pollution of the environment and the risk to workers at the Life Science Products factory (who suffered from severe headaches, tremors and, in some cases, sterility) was not caused by lack of knowledge of the risks to health of using "Kepone" but, as an investigation showed, a pollution control system had not been installed because it would have affected profitability.

The evacuation of Seveso due to a discharge of dioxin has not led to a curtailment of products which contain the poison. And the local population were not informed of the dangers to health for at least ten days after the incident although the manufacturers. Roche, were aware within forty-eight hours that dioxin had been released.

The disaster at Bhopal, where hundreds of cases of serious poisoning in the local community resulted, due to a discharge of poisonous chemicals demonstrates how multinational companies avoid health and safety legislation by switching production to underdeveloped countries where regulations are lax and, consequently, greater profits can be made. And the ease with which production can be moved emphasises the limitations of reforms, especially if attempted on a local or national basis, when workers' organisations are taking on the power of multinational corporations.

One feature of the poisoning of the Rhine has been the comparative lack of reporting of the incident: a major European river has been poisoned, creating an ecological disaster which has affected, and will continue to affect, most of the marine life; the drinking water of 20 million people has been polluted and there could be considerable problems in providing alternative supplies, particularly in years of drought. But newspaper coverage in Britain was, in many instances, relegated to the inside pages. The trivial activities of the parasitical royal family and the ratings war between the television soap operas continued to dominate the news instead. Perhaps the public has become so immune to news of industrial "accidents" that they have ceased to shock: the pollution of our environment has come to be seen as part of the "natural order" of things.

Only a week before the fire at Basle, a chemical plant explosion near the resort of Varna on the Black Sea coast is thought to have killed 17 people. The Bulgarian authorities failed to provide details of the incident and, therefore, the extent of the damage is not known, making it more difficult to protect the public.

It was also reported that the survival of Indian tribes in Brazil is threatened because BP's mining subsidiary working in conjunction with Bruscan, a Canadian company, had set up a local network of more than 100 companies covering 54 million acres.

Both of these news items took up only a paragraph in The Independent and were probably omitted altogether by some of the tabloids. And yet both of these items illustrate two features of capitalism: social needs are always secondary to the need to make profits and commercial interests are protected by secrecy even when this is detrimental to the well-being of the community.

As yet it is far too soon to be able to say with any degree of accuracy what went wrong at the Sandoz chemicals factory at Basle. It is important, however, to try to prevent such incidents happening in the future. But whilst capitalism remains, dangerous materials will continue to be used if they are cheaper, and the competitive nature of capitalism prevents information from being shared which would reduce the risk of accidents elsewhere.

In a socialist society information could be shared: a society in which competition gives way to co-operation would have no need for secrets. Dangerous substances would not be used just because they are cheaper — where possible safer substitutes would be found.

Socialists aim to establish a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interests of the whole community. In a moneyless, socialist society in which free access to goods replaces the artificial scarcities of capitalism, production can be planned properly and the world's resources conserved instead of being wasted or damaged for the sake of making a quick profit.

The lessons of Basle, Seveso, Bhopal and Chernobyl have taught the workers that under capitalism "accidents" will continue to occur. And, although enquiries are conducted, and scapegoats found, production continues as before. Indeed, in the aftermath of Chernobyl the Russian government has stated that it intends to increase its nuclear power programme instead of reducing it.

The risk to the world posed by the threat of nuclear weapons, nuclear power, dangerous industrial processes and indiscriminate waste of resources has never been greater in spite of all the efforts of reformists and ecological pressure groups Only the abolition of capitalism and its replacement by socialism can halt the destruction. We must destroy capitalism before it destroys the earth.

Carl Pinel

50 Years Ago: The Spanish Civil War (1987)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

The agony of Spain is only a matter of concern for the capitalists of other nations if any of them have interests involved or if there is any prospect of gain by fishing in troubled waters. For the rest it is a matter of minor importance to them that thousands of Spanish workers are losing their lives just because landowners and the Catholic Church want to keep intact their privilege to rob the wealth-producer of the product of his toil.

One of the spokesmen of the Spanish Government recently said that over a million lives had already been lost in the present civil war. It is a sad thought that in spite of the many and bitter lessons during the last hundred years, in which millions of workers' lives have been sacrificed, the mass of the workers of the world still fail to grasp the fact that capitalism offers nothing to them but toil and misery, and they still turn away from the Socialist message. Yet, in the advanced countries at any rate, the workers produce and distribute the wealth upon which all live. While the capitalists control this wealth they use their position to live in idleness and luxury. The workers can. and some day will, obtain control of the means of production. When they do so they can banish want and economic misery and the bestialities of the struggle between classes. The lesson is a simple one and so easy to learn if only workers would look facts in the face.

[From an article "Some Lessons from Spain" by G. McClatchie, Socialist Standard February 1937]

Obituary: Israel Renson (1987)

Obituary from the February 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret to record the death of I. Renson. Although he never joined The Socialist Party, he did valuable work in our propaganda. organising classes and lectures about our case.

Perhaps most notably, he was joint author of the booklet Money Must Go (published in 1943) which was a simplified exposition of the capitalist economic system. how it exploits and impoverishes the majority of the population and why it must be replaced with socialism.

Money Must Go was effective propaganda for socialism; it rapidly sold out in this country and was especially popular in Canada and the USA, infected as they were at the time with the false theories of "Social Credit ". To those who knew him. I. Renson will be missed with sorrow.

City Scandals (1987)

From the February 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Did you get your British Gas shares ok? What’s that, you didn’t bother? Well, neither did most other workers who had the chance, and no one knows how many of those who did buy the shares will hold on to them. It was estimated that on the day after the sale, around one tenth of the shares had already changed hands as small-time buyers sold out to the big institutions like insurance com­panies and pension funds. This is what hap­pened with British Telecom shares. When they were first sold in 1984 the number of individual shareholders was 2.3 million. By May 1986 the number was down to 1.6 mill­ion, a drop of over 30%, and this figure is cer­tain to fall still further as time passes.

Nevertheless, interest in the stock market is a lot higher than ever it was before. Until recently most people only ever saw the stock market quotations in the newspapers if they accidentally turned over two pages at once, but the saturation coverage by the media of the government’s privatisation programme has changed all that. Also, the fear of unemployment has ensured that many employees of quoted companies follow the share price of those companies as a guide to their job prospects.

However, the workings of the stock mar­ket remain a mystery to the vast majority of people and this helps preserve the silly notion that financiers, stockbrokers and the like who do understand it are brainier than the rest of us. Actually, it’s not nearly as difficult as it seems One of the main reasons why someone not involved in finance finds it baffling is the frequent use of several different words to describe one item. For example, government “stock , which pays a fixed rate of interest, is also called “gilts” (gilt-edged) or “consols” (consolidated) while “securities” is simply the a11-embracing name for stocks and shares of all kinds.

Different types of shares have different rights and rewards. The “ordinary” shares are the ones which actually own the com­pany. Holders of these have full voting rights and receive a variable dividend depending on the company’s profits, if any, and what the directors decide to pay out. These shares are also referred to (more confusion) as “equities”. “Preference” shares usually have no vote but entitle holders to a fixed dividend ahead of the ordinary shareholders assuming there is something to pay out. “Deben­tures” are loans made to companies by investors who receive fixed-interest whether the company makes a profit or not.

Until October 1986 members of the Lon­don Stock Exchange had to be British-born. And although they would angrily denounce “who does what disputes in factories, ship­yards, etc.. they had their own restrictive practice. This meant that only those who were brokers could buy and sell securities for the public and they made their money by charging clients a fixed commission. “Job­bers”, on the other hand, bought and sold on their own account but could only deal with the public through the brokers and made a living from the difference between the prices at which they bought and sold. So brokers couldn’t act as jobbers and vice-versa. Since October membership of the Exchange is open to other nationals and the difference between brokers and jobbers is abolished along with fixed commissions. Now the price on deals is negotiable

All of these changes, known as “de-regu­lation”, are the result of the Big Bang” we have all heard so much about. The idea is to make the London Stock Exchange more competitive with its main rivals in New York (Wall Street) and Tokyo. After all, if custom­ers can have their business carried out more cheaply in New York or Tokyo then that is where they will make their deals and the new computerised communications technology makes that easy to do. This new technology also means that dealers in London will now transact business in their offices and the Stock Exchange floor will be almost deserted from now on

Any stock market must protect its reputa­tion for honest dealing If investors think that they may be ripped-off then they will take their business elsewhere and this is why the New York and London Stock Exchanges are trying to curb “insider dealing”. The most notorious insider is the Wall Street speculator, Ivan Boesky, who for years had apparently anticipated the rise in price of var­ious securities which he bought on a huge scale. Hailed as a genius, Boesky had simply been using confidential information passed to him, for a cut, by people who were profes­sionally engaged in takeover bids which would push up the price of the shares involved.

It is hard to imagine that Wall Street didn’t know what Boesky was up to. No one can consistently tell in advance what the market will do. The anarchy of capitalist production sees to that. When every company in every industry is making its plans independently of all the others, and when all of them are sub­ject to forces beyond their control such as decisions taken by foreign governments or even their own, then how can future market trends be forecast with any certainty? The truth is that large-scale insider dealing has been the norm for a long time and will con­tinue in the future whatever steps are taken to eliminate it. So much for the claim fre­quently made on behalf of the capitalists that their high returns are justified because they are the risk takers”. Not if they can help it, they’re not!

What about the other claim that the capitalists are the wealth creators” because of their activities in the stock market? The real wealth of society consists of human beings using their physical and mental energies plus the resources of nature to produce the goods and services society needs. This wealth is legally owned by the owners of the enter­prises whose workers have produced it. All the workers receive in return for their efforts is a part of the total value produced in the form of their wages and salaries. The remain­der, surplus value in the form of dividends and interest, belongs to the owners of the various stocks and shares. These securities are merely legal title to this surplus and it is this title which is being traded when sec­urities are bought and sold. So capitalists create not a scrap of wealth and stock exchanges are only the places where surplus value is divided between them.

Even so, the enormous power of the capitalists makes them seem invincible and many workers, even against their wishes, cannot see how capitalism can ever be top­pled. But the power of the capitalists does not lie in the amount of pounds, dollars and francs they own. It lies in the fact that the vast majority of workers still see production for profit as the only possible method of produc­ing and distributing society’s wealth. If that idea should weaken due to the growth of socialist consciousness in the world’s work­ing class then the power of the capitalists would not look so invincible at all.

We can see today how easily stock mar­kets can tremble when investors get the jit­ters over, say, the mere rumour of a small increase in interest rates or some other trivial matter. Imagine what those jitters will be like when the socialist movement begins to grow. Who will be willing to invest then? Capitalism depends for its continued exis­tence on working-class support for it. When that support crumbles then so too will the power of the capitalists.

Vic Vanni

Letter: "With the frills removed . . ." (1987)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors.

May I comment on the review of the book on the Socialist Workers Party which appeared in the December 1986 Socialist Standard (pp. 231-32) While agreeing with the reviewer's criticism of the SWP's insurrectionary ideas and their adherence to Leninism, I cannot see what he finds wrong with the book's description of socialism which he quotes: "With the frills removed, it is people collectively running society, instead of being the prisoners of anarchic capitalist competition and the mad rush for profit at any cost, it is working together for the common good. Our tremendous co-operative power would be controlled, not by a ruling class in the search for ever greater profits, but democratically and for the fulfilment of human need". Surely this is a description that The Socialist Party would accept as well? And if so, it cannot be a basis on which to criticise the SWP. I agree that taken as a whole the SWP's ideas and policies do not add up to what is in the quotation — they add up to some form or another of state capitalism. But you can't use the quotation as your reviewer has done, to illustrate that. You've got to find others which, given the nature of the SWP's case, surely abound on the pages of a book written about them by one of their supporters.

Yours,

Alan Jones

Swansea

Between the Lines: Begging on the screen (1987)

The Between the Lines Column from the February 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Begging on the screen

The ethic of capitalism is pretty clear: if you need money work for it. if you cant work for it beg for it. That is why telethons, with all their gushing goodwill towards "those in need" and their righteous pleasure in “using TV to do good” are sickening events. Both BBC and ITV run them as regular events, no doubt because they pull the viewers in and clean up TV's image the channel that cares.

Terry Wogan and Sue Cook hosted the pre-Christmas BBC telethon Children In Need. With a few smiles and famous faces to keep the punters from pressing their off buttons, the object of the exercise is to persuade workers to donate pounds to charities for poor children. And some of the phone lines when you proudly call in to offer your ten quid are manned by famous names like . . . well. I didn't actually catch the names because I hadn't heard of any of them but just think, you could phone in to help a child in need and maybe talk to Bonnie Langford.

The show lasted for several hours, during one section of which Esther Rantzen actually brought on stage several exhibits — yes, children in need — to show to the viewers in order to prove how important it was to lift that phone and donate some of your huge income.

What sort of a system is it that can take a crippled child, or another who is dying of a terminal illness, and use them as TV exhibits because only by parading them as objects for begging can funds be raised to help them? As the evening went on Wogan and the team were becoming ecstatic with philanthropy: "My word, this is marvellous: we've collected over £2 million — that's more than twice as much as an hour into the programme last year". Then came the big push to make it three million. Come on, wage slaves, forget the fact that 16 million of you are living on or just above the official poverty line, phone Bonnie Langford or some other nonentity and do your bit.

In the end, amid ecstasy which would lead the innocent observer to believe that they'd solved the problem of poverty, the collective viewers of BBC 1 donated £6 million. "What a warm-hearted lot you all are" said Wogan. whose fee for each of his three-night-a-week BBC shows has made him a millionaire several times over. Of course, he was right: the workers giving to help needy children were being decent and caring and co-operative and all of the other things which at other times the people who defend charity tell us that human nature prevents us all from being.

The success of shows like Children In Need depends on the fact that the working class really does want to live in a world without impoverished and suffering children. But £6 million will not do the trick; it is pathetic — an indication of just how futile it is to ask the class which does not possess to give money to those who possess even less.

According to recent US research, the governments of the world spend £100,000 a minute on weapons to kill people. Children In Need was on the air for six hours: that means that on average £36 million was spent on preparations to blow up children (and the rest of us) during the time that a one-off £6 million was collected to help those in great need. After the show ended - and as you read this article the £100,000 a minute continues to be spent and you do not need to phone Bonnie Langford to donate your tenner.


Blinded by the light

American TV films about kids caught up in crazy religious cults must be second in popularity to ones about aircraft disasters It is a good theme for a film: "normal" American kid meets devious cult member who lures him/her into a movement which robs them of their freedom, funds and self- respect. Parents try to rescue them and the film ends with the de-programming scene wherein the innocent victim returns to "normality" with the aid of cruel but kind experts.

Of course, the reason so many of these films are being made is that so many American kids, especially in California and the seemingly affluent West Coast cities, are so discontented and frustrated with the capitalist rat-race that the security of crazy religions like the Moonies and Scientology appeals to them. Blinded By The Light (C4. 9pm. 6 January) was a not very well-acted film of this kind teenage son is won over to peculiar cult led by a sinister Father Adam, parents aim to kidnap him back to deprogramme him, sister infiltrates cult with a view to winning brother back to "normality".

Cults were shown to be totalitarian, dogmatic, uncaring, mind-damaging institutions — which, from all the evidence, they most certainly are. But — and this is the problem which such films never address — they are not that different from all religions. including the state-endorsed ones which "normal" wage slaves are encouraged to believe in.

The motto of Father Adam's cult was Joy Through Humility and it was made plain that disciples were expected to receive salvation through submitting and degrading themselves. Sounds a lot like Christianity to me. The cult members were told that they must work only for the cult, must live within it and renounce their previous lives, even to the point of giving up their old names. So what are monasteries and convents? But I've never seen a film showing how innocent young fools are conned into joining them.

Religion, by definition, is an organised form of dogmatic belief (as opposed to scientific knowledge) and hierarchical command: after all, what is god but a totalitarian dictator? Just as films like this one never explain why one form of crazy behaviour is good for the soul and another is a sign of indoctrinated madness, so they do not show why it is that young people are attracted in the first place to join such sickening cults. Can it have something to do with the phoney sense of community which they offer, as opposed to the extreme poverty of feeling and sense of alienation which characterises the so-called affluent lives of the American young?


Chinese puzzle

It is interesting to note how little TV coverage BBC and ITN have given to the quite significant protests in the major cities of China recently, as opposed to coverage they give to protest movements in Russia. usually involving far less people. Could this have something to do with the fact that state- capitalist China has now become a major Western trading partner and therefore the establishment here does not want to give too much encouragement to any movement to destabilise "our Communist allies", whereas state-capitalist Russia is still a military and trading rival?


What you think

In 1987 this column will be publishing a selection of the points which you send in about TV output. Write and let us know what has made you sick on TV recently or what has opened your eyes to an aspect of capitalism you hadn't recently thought about, Send your letters or postcards to Between The Lines, c/o The Socialist Standard. If none of your points appear you can assume that none have been sent in.

Steve Coleman

Observations: Nuclear nutrition (1987)

The Observations Column from the February 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nuclear nutrition

During the coming year it is likely that the government will announce that, in addition to permitting the contamination of the environment by radiation from nuclear power stations, it will also allow our food to be so contaminated. Since 1967 there has been a ban on the use of irradiation as a method of food preservation but it seems likely that that ban will soon be lifted — which should delight the food industry.

Submitting fresh food to short-wave gamma rays has the effect of killing off bacteria. thus enabling it to be stored longer without rotting. A committee of "experts" set up by the government claims that irradiation is safe and effective but others have argued that it can reduce the nutritional content of some foods and is also open to misuse since there is no way of testing whether or not food has been treated. Critics of the process say this is important since there is a risk that irradiation will be used by the food trade to "clean up" contaminated food so that it can be sold even though it has begun to rot. It is also feared that irradiated food will be treated as if it is sterile and therefore not refrigerated, even though radiation does not in fact kill off all bacteria. So the risk of food poisoning may actually increase.

It seems that once again people's health will be sacrificed so that the food industry can increase its profits still further by passing off as wholesome food which is rotting and contaminated.

Shareholders’ lesson

England's longest running industrial dispute, involving just 88 workers, has a lesson for the millions who bought shares in the privatised state industries and in particular for those who thought that thereby they recast their social standing.

For almost two years, the Silentnight company in Lancashire has been picketed by a group of increasingly beleaguered strikers. The dispute began over pay. it progressed to the sacking of 346 workers and now drags bitterly on, with that handful who have lost the support of even their trade union.

The company's founder, Tom Clarke, is one of Margaret Thatcher's favourite bosses. "Mr Wonderful" she once called him — perhaps because of the firm's family atmosphere under which Silentnight once tried to obscure the realities of class society, employment and exploitation. According to one of the pickets, everyone was once on first-name terms and if an employee was sick Tom Clarke would send a card and some flowers. Perhaps this chumminess was carried on when the crunch came:

  Sorry. Steve but you know how things are. I own this firm, you only work here. I can't have you laying down the law about what you're paid. There's plenty outside who'll be glad of your job. You're fired.
   I'm sorry too. Tom. And I'm not taking this lying down. I'll get together with the other lads and lasses and we'll all down tools together. The union will back us. I know that.

The point about this situation is that among the strikers are two people who own shares in Silentnight. One of them discussed the dispute with Tom Clarke at the last shareholders' meeting: "He was sorry at the way things had turned out, but that doesn't give us our jobs back” she reported.

Which brings us back to buying shares in British Gas and the like. Owning a few shares in some concern, perhaps winning a few pounds by buying and selling them at the right time, does not elevate a worker into the capitalist class. The class we belong to is determined by our economic interests, which means what we rely on for our living. In the case of the capitalist class, who are the real owners and the real shareholders, it means the monopoly of the means of production and distribution; in the case of the workers it means the sale of our labour power — working — for wages.

So the striking shareholders at Silentnight are not a contradiction in terms. They attest to the class division of capitalism, what it means and how it operates; they show the essential poverty of workers and of how deeply they suffer when they do not command a wage. And, shivering around their brazier in their lonely struggle, they do their bit to expose one of today's pernicious and popular fallacies.

Open houses?

One of the host of celebrities attending the UK launch of the UN International Year of Shelter for the Homeless was Rod Hackney. Prince Charles' mate, who is President of the RIBA. Hackney wants housing "to become the centre of public debate in what is likely to be an election year". Well that might provide an extra page or two in newspapers that the homeless can use as blankets when sleeping on the streets.

Hackney is also an advocate of "community architecture'. The idea behind this is that, given the right advice and access to resources, communities can build their own homes. This sounds like quite a good idea until you realise that it is precisely because people don't have access to resources that homelessness is a problem. Because local authorities and the government need, for political reasons, to be seen to be doing something about homelessness, then it's possible that a few highly publicised community architecture schemes will get off the ground as a token gesture. Community architecture, because of its “self-help" image, will no doubt appeal to many Tories — after all the labour power necessary to build the houses will be free — but it will not solve the problem of homelessness and slum housing. That will only happen when people have, not just access to resources to build and repair homes, but free access to those resources.

Putin raises nuclear stakes (2000)

From the February 2000 of the Socialist Standard 

In December’s Socialist Standard, we commented on the decision by the US Senate not to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the promise by the more hawkish Republicans to scupper the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty which outlawed “Star Wars” defence programmes, and suggested that such steps, at the dawn of a new millennium dampened any hopes the more optimistic workers held for the 21st century.

We did not have to wait long for further confirmation of the troubled century that awaits us. Two weeks into the new millennium, the Guardian reported on Moscow’s newly published security strategy doctrine which aims to raise the nuclear stakes by lowering the threshold at which Russia can resort to the use of nuclear weapons:

“Mr Yeltsin’s strategy, decreed in December 1997, declared that nuclear weapons could only be used ‘in the case of a threat to the very existence of the Russian Federation as a sovereign state’. The new document states that the use of nuclear weapons is necessary ‘to repel armed aggression if all other means of resolving a crisis situation have been exhausted or turn out to be ineffective’ “(14 January).

At the peak of the Cold War, the former Soviet Union had a force of 5 million under arms and was an acknowledged superpower. Since 1989, it has seen its armed forces shrink to almost a fifth of that number and has suffered humiliation after humiliation—the withdraw from Afghanistan in 1989 and the first botched war in Chechnya, for instance. As well as morale in the armed forces being low, their combat readiness, according to Putin himself, is in a critical condition, with training and maintenance reported as being grossly inadequate. While a contingent of 300 Russian soldiers serving in Kosovo as part of the peace keeping force have been returned home because of alleged drunkenness, drug-taking and a general inadequateness, the higher ranks are becoming notorious for their infighting, with the defence minister constantly arguing with his generals.

With the above in mind, one can well see the method in Putin’s madness. He has after all the job of protecting the interests of Russia’s capitalist elite with faulty tools. Moreover, he is faced with the stark realisation that he exists in a unipolar world increasingly dominated by the US. Putin’s attempt to make the world once again bipolar can also be seen a response to NATO’s New Strategic Concept which, like Putin’s proposals in his 21 page document, suggests the early recourse to the use of nuclear weapons.

That the world’s leaders are still prepared to carry their nuclear logic into another century, that they are continually prepared to wipe out millions of their fellow humans to further the interests of a minority at the end of a century that witnessed the deaths of 220 million in conflict, should shatter any illusions we have that this century will proceed on a different course to the one we have stepped out of. While we contemplate the wars, the conflicts and the horrors our masters have in store for us this coming century, it is also important to remember that we as a class hold the power to prevent the same from coming about.

We are not ruled by force or coercion, but by consent. The Putins and Clintons of this world can only do the things they do because we vote them in, thus legitimising their actions, however detrimental they may be to our interests. War and conflict and all the terrors we dare to imagine only come to pass because we refuse to join together as a class to express our class interests. Once we recognise that as a class we have shared basic needs and desires, suffering the same privations because of our less privileged position in the relations of production, and unite in defiance of that minority intent on maintaining the status quo and its nuclear insanity, we need never fear the horror of war again.

While you muse on the aforementioned, remember the argument is not that complicated. This is your world as much as anybody’s and requires your active involvement to protect it. Are you for socialism or against it? Don’t take too long to make up your mind—we may not have that much time.

John Bissett

Greasy Pole: Nothing New Millennium (2000)

The Greasy Pole column from the February 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

If there was a sense of relief when the twenty-first century finally dawned it must have been partly because we would no longer have to endure those comments about society which unfailingly began with the words: “With the approach of the Millennium”. It seemed that any plans to do anything about the crisis in the NHS, or about making rail travel safer, or reducing pollution, were given an added urgency because we were approaching a new century. By the year 2000 we had to get it right.

This was irritating enough, especially as those making the comments were usually trying to impress us with the historical sweep of their intellects. It might have been hoped, that the first of January would have brought some relief, the nonsense would have stopped and we would be back in what is called normality, when social problems and deficiencies are described in more commonplace terms, without any added significance by the turning of another page in the calendar. But it was not to be. The celebratory fireworks had hardly died away when we were being assailed with comments which began with such words as “Now that we have entered the new Millennium . . .”

Perhaps enough people were deceived by this into thinking that the arbitrary process of passing from one year to another—or in this case one century to another—would really affect how the world is organised so that the new millennium would bring evidence that people were becoming safer, healthier, more optimistic about their future. If so, they were critically deluded. They would have forgotten that we are treated to the same kind of nonsense every December, when the first seconds of a new year are a time to assume that the next twelve months will be better than the last when reality encourages the conclusion that if anything they will be worse.

Harold Wilson 

We have been here before. As the year 1969 drew to a close the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson made several references to the approach of the 1970s, rather in the same style as all those hopes and plans for the 21st century. The Seventies, Wilson assured us, would be better than the previous decade. He was, in fact, in difficulties because by then his government, which had been elected on the promise to oversee the blossoming of a great new age in which technological advance and planning would solve problems like poverty, disease and poor education, had been largely discredited. Such was the disillusion among his supporters that at one stage it was reasonable to speculate on whether the Labour Party was about to disintegrate. Wilson was desperate; by encouraging us to look forward to a new decade of the Seventies he hoped to deter us from inconvenient memories of the Sixties.

Well of course it did not work out as he had hoped. The Labour government staggered from one crisis to the next. Soon after the dawn of the new decade they were ousted from power, then a few years later returned in the wake of Heath’s calamitous three-day week. By then the much vaunted technological revolution had faded into the disreputable history of politicians’ promises. It was replaced by Labour’s assurance that its special relationship with the unions could smooth the way for their policy of forcing down our living standards which, by some mysterious process, would make us all better off. A few of the party’s more deranged supporters believed this but a lot of them did not—particularly those trade unionists who got fed up with the constant struggle to prevent their standards declining and defended themselves with the strikes which were later damned as the Winter of Discontent. This was followed by glorious spring for the Tories, as Thatcher romped into power, consigning the Labour Party and all its blather about a new decade into the wilderness for almost twenty years.

NHS

And what about now, with a New Labour government and its promises of a new society with new values, new priorities, new achievements . . .? Well there is nothing new about the NHS being in crisis, with nurses and doctors worked into the ground and sick people having to wait for months just to be examined so that they can be allowed onto another waiting list. There is nothing new about this deplorable experience existing at the same time as the rapid and effective treatment available to anyone who has the kind of money needed to pay for a team of the best doctors and a stay in the most exclusive hospitals. There is nothing new in the situation recently summarised by Alistair Darling, whose job as Social Services Secretary is supposed to make him responsible for alleviating poverty: “. . . a child can still be born poor, live poor, die poor”. He did not also say that a child in another class will be born rich, live rich, die rich.

What about other ministers? How are they grappling with the problems of the new millennium? Well Home Secretary Jack Straw plans to prove how tough he is on crime by threatening the legal rights of people charged with minor thefts while he protects the welfare of General Pinochet, who is not one of those youths washing your windscreen at traffic lights without you asking for it but a man who, as dictator of Chile, oversaw the murder of thousands of people there. Straw has bent the rules on admissible immigrants to allow Mike Tyson into this country although he should be disqualified by reason of his prison sentences for rape and assault. The reason for Straw’s generosity was clear: Tyson was due to fight here and if anything was allowed to stop that happening a lot of money would be lost, particularly by the fight promoters and the owners of the TV rights, who are such close buddies of Tony Blair.

Sheffield Wednesday

And as Straw was engaged in grabbing the headlines for his battles for his version of a better life for us all in the 21st century he was in competition with Sheffield’s Labour MPs, among them Education Secretary David Blunkett. Since his days as leader of Sheffield City Council Blunkett has undergone something of a change. He is no longer the challenging left-winger but a man who wants to hound out teachers who display any human frailty in overcoming the difficulties of teaching kids whose extreme impoverishment has extended into their conduct in the classroom. Blunkett has begun the new century by showing that his zeal for sacking people will not stop at schools. With the other MPs, he has demanded the head of the manager of Sheffield Wednesday because the team are stuck at the bottom of the Premiership. Blunkett is pitiless to the idea that, after all, some team has to come last and it does not seem to have occurred to him, that campaigning against a football manager is hardly revolutionary activity for an ex-firebrand of the left.

Nothing new about poverty then, nor about avoidable sickness. Nothing new about class-related degrees of access to wealth. Nothing new about capitalism and how it degrades and represses the very people who are useful and productive while it nurtures its parasites. Nothing new about Labour ministers trying to hide their impotence in smoke screens of deceit.

Ivan

Is Britain being abolished? (2000)

Book Review from the February 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘The Abolition of Britain’. By Peter Hitchens. (Quarter Books)

It certainly is according to rabid right-wing Daily Express columnist Peter Hitchens. Hitchens, who is critical of Mrs Thatcher and regards Michael Portillo as being too liberal, has set out his stall in a book which argues that the post-war period (especially since the 60s) has seen the gradual erosion of everything that once characterised Britain as a great independent Empire nation.

According to Hitchens, Britain’s political, economic and social institutions have been taken over by “cultural revolutionaries” whose clear aim has been the abolition of Britain by stealth. This has resulted in some of the following: the decline of religion, morality and family life; the ruination of a perfectly good education system with comprehensive schooling; the legalisation of homosexuality and the rise of permissive sexual practice, and the abolition of corporal and capital punishment. Underpinning all of the above has been the general decline in respect for authority and patriotism. For Hitchens, this has led to a Britain which is no longer at ease with itself and one which has closed its eyes to its own history which is held in contempt.

Needless to say, with the arrival of Tony Blair and New Labour on 1 May 1997 the final nail in Britain’s coffin was hammered home:

  “1st May 1997 really was the start of a new era. The new Prime Minister’s triumphal progress to Buckingham palace and Downing Street was filmed from the air by sycophantic broadcasters as if a dull cortege of motor cars were a rebel army finally emerging from the sierras to occupy a conquered city.”

And we are all aware of what has subsequently followed. Devolution for Wales and Scotland, House of Lords reform and of course plans to join the single European currency and merge Britain into a federal European super-state. For Hitchens, all this is tantamount to treachery.

For socialists, Hitchens’s entire concept of “Britain” is wrong. All capitalist societies are divided along class lines—capitalist and worker—therefore any talk of “nation” or patriotism is palpable nonsense. Capitalists and workers do not share a common identity nor do they share any interests in common.

Given this, it would be easy to dismiss Hitchens’s views as the ramblings of a mad reactionary “golden-age” theorist who presupposes that the 1950s represented the last bastions of a perfect society. Hitchens, however, has identified certain negative trends in society but has drawn the wrong, reactionary conclusions.

The real materialist backdrop to Hitchens’s entire argument is Britain’s comparative economic decline as a world power and the profound social and political changes that this has undoubtedly brought about. However, Britain’s decline started way before the second world war (as far back as at least the latter part of the 19th century) so there is a historical qualification to Hitchens’s argument. His basic error lies in his uncritical support for Britain’s imperial past whilst at the same time condemning Britain’s rivals for having similar ambitions. His understanding of the nature of capitalism is clearly inadequate.

Clearly there is much wrong with modern society but it is not the result of the so-called “Liberal Revolution” of the 1960s. It is due to the decline of capitalism and the subsequent social havoc which has been created. Of course, Hitchens is really on a Christian/moral crusade against homosexuality and the rise of sexual freedoms which has threatened the sanctity of the traditional nuclear family as society’s cornerstone.

It may be argued that Hitchens’s obsession with morality is a cover for the increasing gap between rich and poor with the obvious social consequences: poverty, frustration, alienation, family breakdown and violence. However, Hitchens is slightly more sophisticated than this. He decries not only both main political parties for presiding over Britain’s moral downfall but also the legacy of Thatcher:

  “The apparent rebirth of Conservatism in 1979 was a false dawn because the Thatcherite movement was not interested in morals or culture. It believed mainly in the cleansing power of the market, which has much to be said for it but which has no answers to many fundamental questions—and which cannot operate properly unless honesty and stability are enforced through both ethics and law. Worse, the Thatcher government unwittingly helped to destroy many of the things Conservatism once stood for. In eighteen years of power, an immense time, the Thatcher-Major government was unable to reverse a single part of the cultural revolution, not least because it barely tried, and did not understand it.”

There is always a certain irony when a staunch defender of capitalism starts to invoke a moral code for human behaviour but in a way it is quite refreshing. At the very least, Hitchens believes that humans are capable of behaving decently (although some of Hitchens’s views can hardly be described as decent). However, he is likely to be disappointed because a social system based upon production-for-profit instead of production-for-need is almost by definition anti-social and amoral.

Dave Flynn

50 Years Ago: Fifty Years Mark-Time (2000)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Francis Williams, one-time Editor of the Daily Herald, has written a history of the Labour Party. “Fifty Years’ March, The Rise of the Labour Party”, published by Odhams Press, Ltd. We suspect that Mr. Williams wrote with a distemper brush. He has certainly given the Labour Party an unblemished white-washing. The main theme of this history is summed up by Mr. Attlee in the foreword to the book. He says:-

  “It is a story very characteristic of Britain, showing the triumph of reasonableness and practicability over doctrinaire impossibilism.”

(. . .) One thing the author does make clear, although possibly without intending to do so. That is, that the founders of the Labour Party wanted to build a Political Party with a substantial numerical strength and they were quite prepared to sacrifice their respective “Socialist” principles at the altar of a large membership. He tells that most of the prominent early workers in the Labour Party were far-seeing enough to build an organisation with numerical and financial strength and a firm foundation of mass support. He proceeds to show us throughout the pages of the book, how the so called Socialists of the Labour Party have had to compromise, twist, wriggle, turn, betray and mis-lead the non-Socialist mass support in order to hold it together. And after studying that sort of thing for years, seeing the struggle between the mass support and the leadership, the desertions, the betrayals, the collapses, and the failure to prevent the evils of capitalism, Mr. Williams still thinks that the Labour Party is a Socialist Party. He still has not learned that the strength of a working-class Party lies not just in its numbers but in its understanding of its objective and its determination to achieve it.

(From an article by W. Waters, Socialist Standard, February 1950)

Voice From The Back: Merciless global capital (1999)

The Voice From The Back Column from the February 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Merciless global capital

All over the world capitalists try to reduce workers’ wages as the most direct way of increasing their profits. International competition and the mobility of capital have made this “cost-cutting” more ferocious. In India last year the already low wages and poor working conditions were made worse by the government’s decision to scrap the laws which defended workers’ living standards: “NEW DELHI, Oct 21.—The government has admitted it is considering proposals for amending the country’s labour laws. An official release issued today announced that changes to the Trade Union Act, 1926, Industrial Disputes Act 1947, Payment of Wages Act, 1938 and Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act 1970, ‘are under consideration’. The statement accepted that the national information and technology taskforce had recommended extending working hours from eight to 12. It denied, however, that the proposal was being considered by the labour ministry. The report on the proposed changes in labour laws has meanwhile drawn strong reactions from the Left and trade union organisations. The move clearly indicated ‘the anti-labour policy of the government,’ said Mr Harkioshan Singh Surjeet, CPI-M general secretary. It was now obvious that the government was being dictated by big business houses,’ he declared.” The Statesmen, Calcutta, 22 October 1998.

No panic but . . .

An unprecedented meeting of world financial leaders is to be convened in Washington next month [January 1999] to implement emergency reforms of the International Monetary Fund and help head off a second bout of global economic turbulence. The move to hold a special session of the IMF’s policy-making interim Committee—the first since it was set up at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944—comes amid signs that the recent recovery in world markets is stalling, with fresh falls on world stock markets, profits warnings and job losses from multi-national companies, as well as fading hopes of restoring order to the Russian economy. The meeting will break the normal pattern of a twice-yearly IMF gathering and emphasises the concern at the fragility of the global economy in both the western countries and the developing world. Guardian, December 1998.

Death is good for business

Reaching a total of 46 billion dollars (270 billion francs), the world arms trade upped 12 percent in 1997 for the third consecutive year, according to the London Institute of International Strategic Studies. The Near and Middle East remain the topmost regional market, with the Far East as runner-up. In possession of 49 percent of these markets, the USA is the biggest supplier, followed by the United Kingdom, France, Russia and Israel. These figures could show a decline in 1998, due to the economic crisis compelling some states to revise their defence budgets. Le Monde, 24 October 1998.

Organise—please!

“On another note people were still throwing things at the cops from too far back and hitting demonstrators. People doing this have to be stopped as serious injuries happen”—from a report of a demonstration in the summer 1998 issue of an anarchist journal called Organise.

Can’t feed—won’t feed 

For several decades the world’s capacity to produce food, for instance, has far exceeded the entire human population’s need for nourishment. Yet the stockpiles of unused foodstuffs pile up unsold each year in producing nations while somewhere else in the world hundreds of millions of others are malnourished, if not actually starving to death. The paradox is explained away easily enough in market terms. Indeed, the market insists that feeding impoverished people would be harmful to them, indulging their backwardness and postponing their eventual self-sufficiency. That answer may satisfy the marketplace, but for humanity it constitutes another great, unanswered social question. Capitalism, for all its wondrous creativity and wealth, has not yet found a way to clothe the poor and feed the hungry unless they can pay for it. One World, Ready Or Not. The Manic Logic of Capitalism, by William Greider.

Nothing to Pay (1999)

From the February 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following is the text of a leaflet that was produced for distribution at anti-tuition fees demonstrations recently:

• Nobody should have to pay to study.
• Nobody should have to buy books or pay rent for accommodation.
• Nobody should have to pay fares to travel.
• Nobody should have to pay for heating or food or water to drink.

The organisers of this demonstration are not asking you to support these demands. They are asking you to confine your demands to the single issue of university fees. They believe that education should be free. It should—but capitalism is not about freedom; it’s about profits and costs. Education in a capitalist system is preparation for the world of being used and exploited. The demand for free capitalist education is not going to be granted. Many people here voted Labour in the hope that it could deliver a kinder form of capitalism. It was New Labour that followed the logic of capitalism and imposed tuition fees. It is naïve in the extreme to expect free services from capitalism.

Socialism has come to be a dirty word. But it’s only once we establish a socialist society of production for use not profit that nobody will have to pay—to study, for books and housing, for travel, heating, food or water. It you are opposed to a system of society where the market plays no role and there is free access to goods and services, then don’t expect free education.

If you’re interested in FREE ACCESS FOR ALL to education, goods and services, then it’s time to go beyond the pleading of this demonstration.

To go beyond the demands for freedom under capitalism, please write for free information to The Socialist Party, FREEPOST, London SW4 7BR.

Greasy Pole: Variable standards (1999)

The Greasy Pole column from the February 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

It may not have happened, that civilised life in this country was shaken to its roots when Peter Mandelson resigned, although to judge by some of the media comment something very like that had happened. He forgot that his government are always telling the rest of us that we can’t have what we want – and what they promised us – for a while; that we have to be patient.

This variable standard extends beyond Peter Mandelson, to the other players in this latest episode of sordid double dealing, who have the kind of embarrassing political past which now, in the days of ascendant New Labour, they must be desperate to bury.

For the Labour Party of Blair and his cronies there is a crime greater than trying to fiddle a mortgage application or borrowing a lot of money from a man whose affairs are under scrutiny. That crime is to have doubts about where their party is going and to question whether it was worth winning power from the Tories in order to run things just as if there was still a Conservative government. Of Labour MPs, loyalty is demanded above all else. Blind acceptance of the will of their leader, of the instructions of the whips and the pagers, an eagerness to feed ministers with cringingly soft questions in the House; these are what will ensure a Labour MP gets on in the world and can look forward to a ministerial job—perhaps even the kind of position that Mandelson carved out for himself, with its contact with the rich and famous, the royal and the influential. In this situation it is dangerous to have a past as a Left Winger—and if anyone has such a past they have to establish beyond all doubt that it will not be resurrected.

Past

How do the players in the Mandelson affair match up to this? First, the man himself. Mandelson was once an organiser for the Young Communist League—a trouble-maker of the left. Now he is invited to Prince Charles’s 50th birthday bash (the only member of the Cabinet to be so patronised), he escorts Princess Margaret to a swanky lunch party (perhaps needing to grit his teeth throughout the meal) and he is friends with a clutch of very, very rich people like Carla Powell and the American Linda Wachner. It can safely be assumed that whenever Mandelson is with these people he is able to resist any temptation to stir up trouble in memory of Stalinist Russia or the ghostly Communist Party.

Then there is Geoffrey Robinson, who was willing to take friendship to such a recklessly generous extent. Robinson is not just a very rich man but one who has played an important part in some of the biggest jobs in British capitalism. Like British Leyland and Jaguar cars; like the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation (a wheeze of the Wilson government which was supposed to keep British industry ever profitable, ever expanding). But in the 1970s the followers of Tony Benn, who were such thorns in the side of the embryo Labour “modernisers”, regarded Robinson as one of them and held him in high esteem. Indeed one of the most prominent of the Bennites at that time, the late Eric Heffer MP (who walked out of the Labour Annual Conference when Neil Kinnock made his famously passionate attack on Militant and what it was doing in places like Liverpool), wanted him to be head of the National Enterprise Board.

Of the lesser players Stephen Byers is one of the keenest supporters of the concept of New Labour. He came into Parliament in 1992 and since then he has risen very fast. Straight after Labour’s victory in 1997 Byers was rewarded for his compliant work in opposition with the job of Schools Standards Minister. The possibilities of this seem to have been immediately apparent to him and he launched ardently into the idea of “naming and shaming” schools—in other words attacking hard working, stressed out teachers who are struggling against the odds in oversize classes in run-down schools whose catchment area includes some of the most impoverished and depressed concentrations of population. This appeal to some of the nastier and more ignorant prejudices among the voters has obviously done Byers’s career no harm; in the fall-out of Mandelson’s resignation he emerged as the new man in charge at the Department of Trade and Industry. But Byers is another one with a political past; he was once a supporter of Militant and when he was a councillor in North Tyneside he was regarded as a hard-line Bennite.

Alan Milburn is such a favourite of Tony Blair that in the reshuffle last July the Prime Minister kept a job warm for him when there was not enough room to promote him—promising that his time would come soon. He is now Chief Secretary to the Treasury ( which means that he does rather more than send out agendas and type up minutes of meetings—much of his job consists of scrutinising and cutting departmental budgets which can have its effect on things like Social Services and medical care). Milburn is another whose star is rising fast; so fast that he seems able to forget his past when he worked in a left-wing Newcastle bookshop called Days of Hope and was an activist in CND.

Campaigns

None of this need disturb us very much, unless we allow ourselves to become particularly irritated by the blatant cynicism of leaders who promote themselves as the guardians of working class interests when in fact they stand for a social system which exploits and degrades its people. We are, after all, well accustomed to the business of left-wing dynamos smartly changing into right wing monuments when there is even the slightest possibility of them achieving power.

What should concern us is the fact that when these people are on the left, when they are spouting their spurious non-arguments, they are heavily critical of the case for a revolutionary change in society, in contrast to being diverted into every blind alley of immediate issues. Left wingers tell us that in their never-ending campaigns and marches and demonstrations they doing something to change capitalism. They assert that when they campaign over jobs, wages, pensions or zebra crossings or whatever else catches their fancy as an issue which can be flogged as a vote-winner, they are actually bringing nearer the end of this social system. They are scornful of the argument that to effect a real change in society there must be a proper understanding and desire for that change instead of for keeping capitalism with one or two modifications in policies and leadership.

This government, with its gaggle of leaders who have come through all that left wing nonsense into what they will say are the realities of power—by which they mean the real, hard world of trying to run capitalism as if it is some other kind of society—exposes this powerful myth. The one big problem is that the myth is not only powerful but persistent. The likes of Mandelson, Robinson, Byers and Milburn may have changed their line and have been exposed but for every one like them there are others out there still agitating, still campaigning, still deceiving themselves. It is a massive, frustrating irony that affairs like Mandelson’s resignation, whatever else it shakes, does nothing to affect that.

Ivan

Putting on the glitz (1999)

TV Review from the February 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

If—as many contend—the network TV channels in Britain are to be criticised for the paucity of original drama on our screens, ITV have taken a novel approach to rectify this situation. It is called Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, runs every night for two or three weeks at a time, and is a quiz show. But it majors on drama, and in a big way.

Let there be no mistake about it, this is not a normal quiz show. Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? has about as much in common with The Sale of the Century as Park Lane has with the Old Kent Road. Whereas Nicholas Parsons used to dangle £1 and £5 notes in front of his lucky contestants, Chris Tarrant has £1,000,000 in an open briefcase locked in a glass cabinet, just so that all the hopefuls may drool at it. Nobody has yet won a million—in fact, nobody has yet come all that close either. But that is not the point. Substantial sums of money have been won, including in the series just finished, where two contestants walked away with £125,000 each, which—Tarrant claimed—was the highest winnings on a TV quiz show or gameshow ever, anywhere in the world.

Because of this the contestants, when chosen from a preliminary round, typically display signs of nervousness and hysteria far in excess of that usually associated with being under the glare of the lights on primetime TV. Indeed, if being in the studio encourages their nervousness, it is the juicy carrot being dangled in front of them which understandably induces the hysteria.

Contestants have to ring up the night before the programme to try and secure a place on the show. It is clear that many who do (and there are apparently hundreds of thousands of them) do so not just because it would be nice to win some money. No, most of these people are clearly desperate and many hint at debts, unemployment, hateful jobs or family misfortune (the latter of which, interestingly, could be the accurate title of another ITV quizshow). They are people on a mission and that mission is called ‘escape from the working class’. It is not Mission Impossible, though practically near enough.

Lord Smugness of Tarrant

All of this is grist to the mill at Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? This is a programme which thrives on getting its contestants to squirm, or beg even. Contestants win money by answering a series of (increasingly difficult) questions but are liable to lose most or all of it on the elucidation of the first wrong answer. It is, without doubt, a game where contestants are always best quitting while they are ahead. Even so, some contestants are so desperate they will actually guess at questions they do not know the answer to in the hope of doubling their money. Many later live to regret it.

All big money answers are met with a series of grimaces, winks and off-putting questions by the programme’s host, Chris Tarrant. Tarrant is a quiz show host never willing to simply tell a contestant they are right or wrong. He has to milk every occasion to the very utmost, so much so that many of the contestants show visible irritation with him. Put it this way—if ever the Sun drops its sponsorship of the programme, the Milk Marketing Board would be the obvious replacement.

Despite one of two flaws in the format (the half-an-hour editions are far too short given the amount of milking Tarrant engages in) this an entertaining and dramatic TV programme. It is highly watchable TV, that is if you like that sort of thing. What is sickening about it is that grown men and women should feel the need to have to prostitute themselves in such a way, winning money through their own humiliation on national television—having an over-zealous DJ teasing and taunting them as they desperately try to pay off the bills.

There are many words to describe capitalism and this is a programme which has illustrated beyond reasonable doubt that ‘the undignified society’ is one of them. With its bright spotlights, dramatic music, big money and question format it is exciting stuff at times—thrilling even. But in the dignity stakes it is one step up from eating a bucket full of pigs` bladders on The Word. And then, frankly, only just.

DAP